The shortlists for one of science fiction and fantasy's most prestigious prizes were announced this evening, setting Jordan's epic – which runs to 4.5m words – against four single-volume works for the best novel award.

Jordan's story of the battle of good against evil – Rand al'Thor the "Dragon Reborn" and his allies against the ranked armies of darkness – has sold millions of copies around the world. But according to the science fiction novelist and academic Adam Roberts, who posted a series of reviews of the epic in 2010, it is "massively derivative of Tolkien".

"The only substantive thing it adds to The Lord of the Rings is increased length," he wrote, "and since each of Tolkien's 1,100 pages is 10 times as dense as Jordan's 11,000, that resolves into no additional substance at all. Otherwise there's a cosmic battle between good and evil, little people caught in the middle of incipient cosmic war, bestial orcs ('trollocs'), Istarian wielders of the true source. Does Jordan, in one jarringly unAmerican moment, have one character say 'I can feel it … I can bloody feel it!' because he thinks that's how JRRT's compatriots swear? The professor would not have been pleased."

The Wheel of Time lines up against Charles Stross's Neptune's Brood, in which a "metahuman" travels across a universe where people became extinct aeons ago to find her lost sister, and Ann Leckie's debut, Ancillary Justice, the story of a spaceship confined to a human body. (The latter has also been shortlisted for the Arthur C Clarke award.)

Mira Grant, the pen name for Seanan McGuire, is also in the running for Parasite, set in a near future world where humanity is kept healthy by a genetically engineered tapeworm, and Larry Correia is up for Warbound, Book III of the Grimnoir Chronicles.

This year a "retro" prize will also reward the best novels of 1939, with a shortlist – announced this evening – pitting the likes of Edgar Rice Burroughs against CS Lewis, TH White and EE Smith. White is in the running for his classic Arthurian tale The Sword in the Stone, while CS Lewis makes the shortlist for Out of the Silent Planet. The best novella of 1939, meanwhile, will see Ayn Rand's Anthem competing against John Wyndham's Sleepers of Mars.

Best novelette

● Opera Vita Aeterna by Vox Day (The Last Witchking, Marcher Lord Hinterlands)● The Exchange Officers by Brad Torgersen (Analog)● The Lady Astronaut of Mars by Mary Robinette Kowal (maryrobinettekowal.com/Tor.com)● The Truth of Fact, the Truth of Feeling by Ted Chiang (Subterranean)● The Waiting Stars by Aliette de Bodard (The Other Half of the Sky, Candlemark & Gleam)

Best short story

●If You Were a Dinosaur, My Love by Rachel Swirsky (Apex Magazine)● The Ink Readers of Doi Saket by Thomas Olde Heuvelt (Tor.com)● Selkie Stories Are for Losers by Sofia Samatar (Strange Horizons)● The Water That Falls on You from Nowhere by John Chu (Tor.com)